THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 21, 2004
By DANIEL DUANE

On a recent Manhattan morning, with a cold wind slashing
off New York Harbor, Lou Marinoff took the granite steps of
the federal courthouse two at a time -- brown eyes fierce,
ivory white skin offsetting his dark beard, a Russian fur
hat making him the very picture of the engaged
intellectual. A tenured philosophy professor at City
College of New York and the author of ''The Big Questions:
How Philosophy Can Change Your Life'' and of the
international best seller ''Plato, Not Prozac! Applying
Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems,'' Marinoff is the
world's most successful marketer of philosophical
counseling. A controversial new talk therapy, philosophical
counseling takes the premise that many of our problems stem
from uncertainties about the meaning of life and from
faulty logic.

Passing through courthouse security, Marinoff placed his
World Economic Forum tote bag in the metal detector -- swag
from his annual gig in Davos, Switzerland, and filled that
morning with documents for Marinoff's lawsuit against his
own employer. Claiming a violation of his freedom of
speech, the case stems from a C.C.N.Y. moratorium on
Marinoff's campus counseling, instituted while
administrators looked into liability questions. What if a
philosopher with zero mental health training, they worry,
fails to recognize a student's suicidal tendencies and
prescribes Heidegger instead of psychiatric intervention?
The moratorium is no longer officially in effect, but
Marinoff is suing for lost income and professional
opportunities, and C.C.N.Y. attorneys have also laid out
insurance requirements that Marinoff finds utterly
offensive: ''We have never, not ever, had a single case in
which philosophical counseling caused psychological harm,''
he said in the courthouse elevator. ''These people just
can't tell the difference between psychology and
philosophy. That's how badly educated people are these
days.''

The lawsuit is only one of several fronts in Marinoff's
crusade to make philosophical counseling a mainstream
profession, and to make himself its public face. His
message, spoken in a defensive staccato, goes like this:
Americans are tired of psychologists dwelling on our every
painful feeling, we're sick of psychiatrists prescribing a
new drug every time we feel confused and many of our most
pressing problems aren't even emotional or chemical to
begin with -- they're philosophical. To wit: You don't have
to be clinically depressed or burdened by childhood guilt
to want help with the timeless questions of the human
condition -- the persistence of suffering and the
inevitability of death, the need for a reliable ethics.
''Even sane, functional people need principles to live
by,'' Marinoff told me, his voice lowering without slowing
in the sun-flooded courtroom, ''so we are offering what
Socrates called the examined life, the chance to sit with a
philosopher and ask what you really believe and make sure
it's working for you.''

Regardless of C.C.N.Y.'s unease about philosophical
counseling, the public appears ready and eager for at least
some form of philosophy in the daily diet. Witness Tom
Morris, a former Notre Dame professor, charging the likes
of I.B.M. and General Electric up to $30,000 an hour for
his lecture on the ''7 C's of Success,'' distilled from
Cicero and Spinoza, Montaigne and Aeschylus. Christopher
Phillips, author of ''Six Questions of Socrates'' (just out
from W. W. Norton), has been traveling the country engaging
spontaneous crowds in Socratic dialogue about the nature of
justice and the meaning of courage. And ''Philosophy
Talk,'' a new San Francisco-based radio show modeled on
NPR's ''Car Talk,'' offers two wisecracking Stanford
professors -- and their many call-in guests -- tackling
thorny matters like ''Is Lying Always Bad?'' and ''Would
You Want to Live Forever?''

As for philosophical counseling, in which the philosopher
serves as a kind of life coach/bodhisattva, the practice
does have a toehold in Europe, Israel, South Africa, India
and especially the U.K., where Alain de Botton's 2000 best
seller, ''The Consolations of Philosophy,'' became a
six-part television series. Marinoff wasn't the first to
try philosophical counseling in the United States, but he's
way ahead of the pack when it comes to building the
institutions of legitimacy and seeking access to the river
of money known as health-insurance reimbursement.

Like any entrepreneur cornering a new market, Marinoff has
worked fast and furiously, sometimes bruising competitors
along the way. In short order, he has established the
American Philosophical Practitioners Association
(A.P.P.A.), started a series of three-day
counselor-certification weekends and begun setting up an
academic journal. Before those pesky lawyers got involved,
he was even performing research on human volunteers at
C.C.N.Y. and arranging for a New York foundation to finance
free philosophical counseling through the C.C.N.Y. campus
wellness center.

Marinoff does have his fans - Vaughana Feary, a New
Jersey-based practitioner and A.P.P.A. board member, says
that Marinoff's books bring her a steady stream of would-be
clients. But to many of the other philosophical counselors
in this country -- and to quite a few overseas -- Marinoff
may be the worst thing ever to happen to their fledgling
field. Shlomit Schuster, an Israeli practitioner, calls
''Mr. Marinoff's overpopularizing presentation a worldwide
embarrassment for the profession,'' and David O'Donaghue, a
licensed psychologist with a doctoral background in
philosophy, says that Marinoff ''is not a scholar, he's not
a guy who should be leading a country'' in philosophical
counseling. ''This is an infant field, and we're all asking
questions.'' O'Donaghue says that he considers Marinoff's
three-day certification efforts ''ludicrous'' and that
''the psychologists are laughing at us!'' Marinoff's
strongest competition, in fact, comes from the American
Society for Philosophy Counseling and Psychotherapy
(A.S.P.C.P.), which is devoted to precisely the opposite
tack -- seeking bridges to the established professions.
According to Elliot D. Cohen, one of the society's
executive directors, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy from
Brown University and is a certified practitioner of
rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), a common form of
talk therapy, ''The biggest obstacle to philosophical
counseling's growth in the U.S. is its acceptance by the
established mental health fields, because we're the newest
kid on the block. And what are people in those fields
saying now? With Marinoff certifying people who have no
clinical training? They're saying, 'Philosophers don't know
anything about mental health, and they're going to serve as
an endangerment to clients.'''

Marinoff considers his philosophical practice all the
clinical training he needs, and could be on the verge of
rendering the question moot. Ruben Diaz Jr., New York State
assemblyman for the 85th District in the Southeast Bronx,
said he believed so strongly that his constituents could
use philosophical help that he is pursuing the only thing
that can make it affordable: New York State certification
of the profession, and the H.M.O. co-pays that
certification makes possible. To that end, Diaz has written
to the New York State commissioner of education, asking
that certified philosophical counselors be recognized under
a 2002 law that grants state licensing to
marriage-and-family therapy and creative arts therapy. Most
important, Diaz, who first heard about philosophical
counseling through Marinoff, has suggested that the state
recognize Marinoff's own A.P.P.A. as an official
certificate-granting body.

Diaz explained that there are those who ''make bad
decisions, based on economic pressures. We have single
mothers, families broken, people getting sick.
Philosophical counseling teaches people about moral and
ethical choices. If this is available to our young people,
it might better their lives.''

As in the early days of psychoanalysis, and the famous rift
between Freud and Jung, philosophical counselors disagree
on everything from the best name -- philosophical practice?
public philosophy? -- to whether they should be trying to
cure people, empower them or guide them to
self-understanding. Thus far, only Cohen and Marinoff have
branded easily comprehended techniques. Cohen's logic-based
therapy builds on the work of his mentor Albert Ellis, who
invented REBT. Citing the ancient Greek philosopher
Epictetus, and the insight that it is not the events in our
lives that cause us suffering but the way we interpret
them, Ellis sees much of our unhappiness as based on
irrational assumptions, like demanding perfection from
yourself and others. Cohen teaches critical-thinking skills
that help us identify those irrational assumptions and
correct them.

Marinoff and other practitioners hold that we all have a
philosophy of life, whether we know it or not, and that we
can benefit from identifying that philosophy, making sure
it helps us rather than hinders us -- defining success,
say, in a way we might actually achieve it -- and then
strengthening it through dialogue with the great thinkers.
Where Marinoff departs from the others, and sets their
teeth on edge, is in the way he packages the journey of
philosophical self-improvement. In ''Plato, Not Prozac!''
for example, Marinoff outlines a five-step ''PEACE
process'' that seems ready-made for daytime TV: identify
the Problem, take stock of your Emotions, Analyze your
options, Contemplate your entire situation and then --
voila! -- reach Equilibrium.

Citing privacy concerns, Marinoff declined to give contact
information for any of his clients, but in ''Plato, Not
Prozac!'' he includes a case study of ''Doug,'' a
late-night-radio talk-show host. Doug sees his Problem as
his inability to be happy without a woman to love and the
impossibility of meeting a woman while he works the
graveyard shift. Doug's Emotion is loneliness, and his
Analysis of possible options turns up only two: leaving his
job or being lonely forever. That's where Marinoff comes
in: trying to free Doug from the mental trap he has built
for himself, Marinoff encourages Contemplation of Eastern
philosophy. Namely, the Taoist warning against craving
things we've decided we cannot have, and the Buddha's
reminder that what we experience in life is what we have
previously willed. In short: stop obsessing on your need
for love, stop thinking you'll never find it. Then will
your life into the shape you'd like for the future.

Among serious academic philosophers -- even those who
address the so-called human-condition questions -- there is
an almost visceral revulsion at the very idea of
philosophical counseling. Jonathan Lear, a psychoanalyst
and philosophy professor at the University of Chicago,
considers himself committed both to the therapeutic power
of conversation and to the Socratic philosophical tradition
of investigating life's pressing concerns. He is deeply
skeptical, nevertheless, of any counseling approach that
imagines that you can dwell purely in the realm of reason,
ignoring hidden motive and unresolved feeling, ''That's a
fantasy,'' Lear said by phone. ''And you don't have to be a
Freudian to think so. One of the most looming problems for
Plato about the human soul is that there's a powerful
unconscious dimension.''

For Alva Noe of the University of California, Berkeley, the
problem is much simpler: ''While there is every reason to
think that philosophical method and rigor, when applied to
life's problems, can lead to growth, emancipation,
improvement, et cetera, philosophy is very, very hard. How
many people really get a life turnaround from practicing
kung fu or tai chi?''

Raised in Montreal, Marinoff followed a somewhat circuitous
route to his role as philosophical counseling's American
figurehead. In the 1960's, he was a middle linebacker- aka
Animal -- on his high-school football team, and he lived on
a kibbutz before spending the 1970's wandering North Africa
and then playing electric guitar for the Dog Brothers, a
hard-rock group. Married with a young son in the 1980's,
Marinoff put much of his considerable energy into table
hockey -- becoming the three-time Canadian Open champion.
After philosophy doctoral work at University College London
and post-doctoral research at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, Marinoff helped organize the first international
conference on philosophical counseling in 1994.

Marinoff landed his job at C.C.N.Y. later that year,
applying soon after for approval to do counseling research
on human subjects. In the meantime, he became active in
what was then the only philosophical counseling group in
the country, the A.S.P.C.P. The board, including its
co-founder, Elliot Cohen, elected Marinoff president in
1996, and at first, the two worked in concert -- Cohen
wrote a professional code of ethics, another board member
established mentor and internship guidelines for
professional certification and Marinoff talked C.C.N.Y.
into contributing $5,000 for the Third International
Conference on Philosophical Practice.

But it was at that conference in July 1997 that Marinoff
announced that the A.S.P.C.P. was certifying counselors and
that a test was already available. The response was
decidedly mixed. Shlomit Schuster perceived a power grab by
the A.S.P.C.P. board, granting themselves undue authority.
O'Donaghue protested that certification was premature for
such an embryonic field. Marinoff did not take this lying
down. ''He just blasted us,'' O'Donaghue said. ''He let us
know this was his baby.''

Within days of the conference's ending, Assemblyman Diaz
called, as did literary agents wanting a book proposal.
Five months later, at the December meeting of the
A.S.P.C.P., the board voted Marinoff executive director
and, according to Cohen, asked him to look into
professional malpractice insurance and nonprofit status, in
order to establish the A.S.P.C.P. as a legal certifying
body. Marinoff agreed to do all this but, as he recalls it,
he was already quietly talking to certain board members
about incorporating an entirely different nonprofit
society, one that he could run, as he put it recently, like
''a C.E.O. instead of an academic committee chair.''
Marinoff said he never mentioned this to the full
A.S.P.C.P. board because it was a private matter.

Then in March 1998, to the surprise of Cohen and other
board members, they received an e-mail message from
Marinoff inviting them to become ''honorary members'' of
his new organization, something called the American
Philosophical Practitioners Association (A.P.P.A.).

Marinoff stepped down as executive director of the
A.S.P.C.P. later that year, and the embryonic field of
philosophical counseling suffered its first full-blown
professional schism. ''I think the American practitioners
all kind of fell apart after that,'' O'Donaghue told me.
''We got a lot of anger from Lou,'' he said, describing
Marinoff's bullying. ''We wilted.'' Marinoff ''did the same
thing the following year at the conference in Cologne. He
was a keynote speaker, and he talked about the 'clowns'
trying to practice philosophical counseling without even
being trained, and he was speaking about many of the
practitioners in the room. As if he was trained.''

O'Donaghue continued: ''He's done so much damage, and if he
gets in trouble, which I think he will, the movement might
fall. Psychoanalysis really got identified with Freud, but
Freud was brilliant. Marinoff is just self-promoting. He's
like the emperor without any clothes. He's built something
up and said, 'If I build up an illusion, people will start
believing in it, and then it will become real.'''

When Marinoff left the federal courtroom that morning in
January, he headed off to tape an interview that he said
was for a Hollywood producer pitching him to Fox
Television. Marinoff has had extraordinary success since
the break with the A.S.P.C.P. - ''Plato, Not Prozac!''
translated into more than 20 languages, his annual visit to
Davos. Crossing Lower Manhattan, Marinoff walked and talked
with extraordinary vigor about his coming talk at the East
Asia Economic Summit in South Korea and about a three-day
training session he'll give in Genoa, Italy, next month.
Meanwhile, Assemblyman Diaz says he is optimistic about
state licensing. The process won't fully unfold until next
year, but the commissioner of education has asked Marinoff
for documentation about the A.P.P.A. If it all works out
(by no means a foregone conclusion), Marinoff said
excitedly, ''certified philosophical practitioners --
C.P.C.'s, if you will -- become eligible for reimbursement
by insurance companies. Immediately, we will be on a level
playing field with the other helping professions.''

Though C.C.N.Y. attorneys give no indication of wanting to
settle the lawsuit, Marinoff, in his relentless drive
forward, insists that they're getting scared. ''I'm
perfectly willing to drop the suit if they'll partner with
me -- on setting up a graduate program and the scholarly
journal and my research, and all the rest,'' Marinoff said.
''I am not a litigious person. I have only been doing what
is in the interest of philosophers and the general public.
It's a pioneering effort, a global thing, and the
university should be proud to be the center of it.''
Describing his grand -- even grandiose -- plans for a
philosophical-counseling empire fills Marinoff with a
combative intensity. ''We are already training and
certifying practitioners,'' he said, his voice gaining
speed. ''We could have them delivering services in prisons
and elder-care facilities and hospitals working alongside
of doctors. We could have ethicists helping people make
difficult end-of-life decisions. We could be rendering
services to governments all over the world. We could
basically make philosophy more popular than it's been since
the days of the agora, in ancient Greece.''